The 4.381 kilometres long Hungaroring was unchartered territory for Dutch driver Christiaan Frankenhout, but that did not in the least prevent him from putting the Hofor Racing Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 (#1, Kroll/Heyer/Frankenhout/Eggimann) on pole position for tomorrow’s Hankook 12H HUNGARY. In qualifying, Frankenhout drove a fastest lap time of 1:46.787 minutes, which made him 0.419 seconds faster than Lance-David Arnold in the SPS automotive performance Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 (#4, Pierburg/Müller/Arnold). Therefore, Mercedes-Benz customer teams lock out the front row of the grid for the twelve-hour race, which will start tomorrow at 8 am. The best-placed non-Mercedes is Stadler Motorsport’s Porsche 997 GT3-R (#20, Amstutz/M. Ineichen/R. Ineichen) in third place overall.
Lance-David Arnold, an official Customer Sports Pool Driver of Mercedes-Benz competition arm AMG, was on top of the leaderboard for a long time after setting a fast lap time early in the 1:30 hrs session. Then, with eight minutes remaining, Christiaan Frankenhout went out for another shot at pole position and became the first driver to post a lap time of under 1:47 minutes. Arnold tried to attack, but to no avail, so that Frankenhout came out on top. “It is my first time here and it took me a while to find my way around the circuit,” Frankenhout commented. “It certainly is more technical than it looks on television. We made many changes on the set-up of the car throughout the session and our final attempt was successful. I am glad it worked out, especially as Lance is an old team-mate of mine, so there is some friendly competition between the two of us. Of course, being on pole is always nice, but we all know that the starting grid position doesn’t mean too much in an endurance race. Twelve hours is a long time, many things can happen.”
German driver Lukas Schreier, a regular in the German Porsche Carrera Cup, claimed pole position in the SP2 class with the Porsche 997 Cup car of Austrian team, ZaWotec Racing (#8, Uckermann/Daum/Schreier) and a time of 1:50.955 minutes. Experienced Belgian Vincent Radermecker put the Team Altran Peugeot 208 GTi (#18, Radermecker/Palette/Roman) on pole in the A5 class with a time of 1:58.224 minutes. Former British Touring Car Championship driver Tom Onslow-Cole drove the KPM Racing Volkswagen Golf (#38, Onslow-Cole/White/Edwards) to pole position in the D1 class with a time of 2:04.837 minutes.
The race starts on Saturday, 4 October, at 8.00 hrs and ends at 20.00 hrs, immediately followed by the prize-giving ceremony. Live timing, photos and videos can be found at: live.24hseries.com while there are also regular updates on Twitter (@24HSeries) and Facebook (24H Series). A 24 minutes’ highlight show will be broadcast on Motors TV at a later stage. More information about the Hankook 12H HUNGARY and the other rounds of the 24H SERIES powered by Hankook can be found at: www.24hseries.com.